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A Summer That Won’t Suck, Outing 1: Petersen Automotive Museum

Well, if there’s anything that will get me blogging with regular frequency, it’s going out and doing things. And that’s exactly what the kid and I did today.

He had heard about an event going on at the Petersen Automotive Museum months ago: a Lamborghini cruise-in. He’s really into said cars right now (to the point of my wishing to never hear the name again) but figured he would really enjoy seeing the cars roll in.

Oh, and the museum would be hosting the North American debut of the Lamborghini Centenario, a car so rare that all 40 of the planned models have been sold already – at $2 million each.

Must be nice, no?

Anyway, the cruise-in was scheduled to start at 8am which meant waking up at the crack of dawn to give us time to battle whatever L.A. traffic we happened to encounter along the way. Fortunately, none of the highways were backed up and we made pretty good time even if it was drizzling pretty heavily almost the entire trip.

I would hesitate to call it rain – even as a California native.

We arrived and parked the car then waited near the entrance to watch some of the cars pull in.

Anthony has been using Ann’s old digital camera for his Photographic Journalism class in school and he brought it today to get some more practice.

Once it got closer to 8am, we walked upstairs to the 3rd level of the parking structure to view the parked cars. And wow, what a collection of old and new. Here’s a Lamborghini Mura (foreground) and Espada (background). Just beautiful cars.

Granted the old ones sounded nothing like their newer siblings but they were still beautiful. And as we walked around, more started to arrive.

This is the Batventador, or an Aventador with Batman logos all over it. Interesting to say the least and Anthony knew of it right off the bat because he’d seen it on Instagram. I later sat by the owner of the car, Debbie, at the debut of the Centenario. We had a little chat over the empty seat next to me and a few laughs about it (since the woman who was sitting there never returned). Turns out she’s super-nice and also ultra-cool to kids.

These are all new models. I peeked at the window sticker of the white one: 12 MPG and a price of over $530k. The rest were more “reasonably” priced by comparison.

Then there was this young man who was well-known by museum volunteers. He sat in his chair and rendered a Lamborghini 350GT. Quite a talent to say the least.

I really could shoot car details all day long, no matter the model.

But all of this, of course, was only part of the reason we were there. The debut was scheduled for 10am so after getting an eyeful of these exotic cars, it was time to go into the museum and see yet another one.

And it was near chaos. Those who purchased tickets for the day got a sticker and also early entry to the debut. Everybody else had to wait, despite submitting my RSVP last week and having my confirmation.

Security had no idea. People were getting a bit angry and while it’s only a car, I can see their point. Why RSVP if you’re not going to let us in?

After about 10 minutes, those with RSVP emails/printouts were let in while those without had to wait even longer. Seemed fair.

Two people spoke at the event: one from Turn 10 Studios who produces the Forza Motorsport games for Xbox, and a representative for Lamborghini. Their speeches weren’t long as the crowd was big and pretty excited to see the Centenario.

Well, a replica of it at least. None have been made yet.

And after their speeches, the car was unveiled.

With all the crowding, these were the best shots I could get and unlike the all of the previous images, I used my phone. It was just easier.

By now, the both of us were getting hungry and also needed some fresh air. Apparently the AC doesn’t work too well in the museum (my assessment at least) so we went outside and walked around. Of course, I still took pictures.

I like how the building practically matches the shape of the museum’s architecture from this angle. Frames is perfectly.

And I had spotted this early on but didn’t get a good shot of it until after the event.

Johnie’s Coffee Shop was temporarily turned into Bernie Sanders HQ and still has all the propaganda in place. It’s normally closed but has been used in a bunch of movies including The Big Lebowski and Reservoir Dogs.

At the end of the day, the kid was more than satisfied with the event and seeing his favorite brand of car up close and in ridiculous quantity.

And honestly, I could have done this on my grocery store salary since the event was free and parking only set me back $12. A fun day indeed.

And with that, A Summer That Won’t Suck has officially begun! Stay tuned for more.